She said: "I know this award is for me and I am so delighted to have been given it but really I'm accepting it on behalf of the huge team of people behind me who are so dedicated to making changes and level crossings safer across the country. Very, very proud."

The Queen's Fire Service Medal has been awarded to the chief fire officer of Buckinghamshire Fire and Rescue, Mark Stewart Jones.

Hertfordshire's Professor David Fish, a consultant neurologist at University College London's Academic Health Sciences Centre receives a knighthood for services to the NHS.

Other people living in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire to be given awards include director of Hertfordshire Social Services, Sarah Jane Pickup who is made an MBE for services to social care.

The retiring chief executive of Milton Keynes Council, David Hill, from Ashford in Kent, is appointed OBE for services to local government.

Suzanne Lear, from Buckinghamshire, is made MBE for voluntary services to medical research.

She began the Lisa Lear Fund for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma & Hodgkin's Disease Research when her daughter, who died in 1979, was diagnosed with the disease.

Barry Welck, from Radlett in Hertfordshire, who founded the Langdon Foundation to support Jewish people with learning disabilities to lead independent lives, has been made MBE.